In the Qing Dynasty, in Zibo, there were three famous people along the Xiaofu River, that is, Zhao Zhixin, a famous poet in Boshan in the upper reaches and an official to Hanlin; Pu Songling, a great master of world short stories in Zichuan, the middle reaches; Wang Yuyang, a generation of poets and literary leaders in Huantai in the lower reaches, was the official to the minister of punishments. Now I'd like to introduce Zhao Zhixin, a famous poet in Qing Dynasty. Zhao Zhixin was born in an official family. Having received strict feudal education since childhood, he was able to write poems at the age of five or six, and he was called a "child prodigy". As an adult, the official went to the Hanlin Academy to praise goodness and was called Zhao Hanlin. Zhao Hanlin had a few interesting stories when he was a child, and I'll tell you about them here. One day, when the teacher was walking in the garden, he suddenly saw the lush green castor leaves look like the palm of a human hand, so he was full of poetry and said casually, "What does the castor at the weir head want?" Just then, Zhao Zhixin was also playing in the courtyard. When he heard Mr. Wang's words, he looked at the blooming lotus in the pool, thought for a moment and immediately said, "Who is the lotus in the pool punching?" Hearing this, Mr. Wang was secretly pleased to see that it was Zhao Zhixin, a pupil.
Near Zhao Zhixin's study, there lived a poor girl, who was lonely and had a hard time. Zhao Zhixin, a rich boy, secretly helped her order pasta, clothes, etc., and this matter reached the ears of her husband. Mr. Wang is afraid of accidents, which will damage the reputation of Zhao family and affect the future of Zhao Zhixin. Just borrow a couplet to warn him. The first line from Mr. Wang is: "drilling a dog hole and stealing cherries. I wonder who it is?" Zhao Zhixin had already understood this in his heart, so he confidently said to him, "Jumping the dragon gate and breaking the cassia twig, that is me.". After listening to this, Mr. Wang felt that this son was extraordinary and his future was limitless, so he could not be taken lightly.
One year, the Zhao government built a lot of buildings and expanded its house. In a short time, Zhao Zhixin got acquainted with the craftsmen. As soon as he was free, he went to chat with the craftsmen. Everyone had long heard that the young master of Zhao's house was clever, quick-witted, good at poetry and prose, and wanted to test him and try his talent. One day, the masters called Zhao Zhixin and said, "Master, can I ask you a question?" Zhao Zhixin replied without hesitation: "Yes! Please ask the master to give a question. " An old master said: "I will build a house as the topic, and make an upper part. You can make a lower part!" " So he said, "Bend the tile, lift the tile, and tile to tile." After listening attentively, Zhao Zhixin even said, "Good online, good online." So he immediately replied: "horizontal brick, vertical brick, brick top brick." In the third year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty, Sun Tingquan, the official minister, resigned from his post and returned to Yan Shen for the people. Because Sun Tingquan was the teacher of Emperor Kangxi, Yan Shen called him Sun Gelao. When Zhao Zhixin was at school, Sun Ge had returned to his hometown for several years. One day, after dinner, Sun Ge went for a walk by Xiaofu River and happened to find a teenager fishing in the river. The boy is wearing green trousers and a green jacket, and his hands are scratching and groping, and the splashing water will get wet all over, which is very interesting. The more he watched it, the more he loved it. He joked with him, "The frog in the water is dressed in green." The boy suddenly heard someone on the shore taunting him as a frog. He looked up and saw an old man in a red robe. He replied, "A crab in soup wears a red robe." Sun Ge always listened, looked at himself in red, and couldn't help laughing, saying that he was right. Later, when I inquired, I realized that this boy was Zhao Zhixin, the son of the Zhao family in the city. I thought to myself: This boy is so quick-witted, and he is full of heaven, with a vast square garden and imposing manner, and he will be a pillar of the country in the future. Therefore, Sun Ge personally betrothed his granddaughter to Zhao Zhixin.
One year, Sun Ge was summoned by Emperor Kangxi. In order to ask Sun Ge to stay in Beijing for a few more days, Emperor Kangxi thought of a clever plan: at the banquet, Kangxi said to him, "I, now write an upper couplet, and Sun Aiqing will come to the lower couplet. When Aiqing is right, he will go back to the government." Hearing this, Sun Ge quickly left his seat to pay homage and said, "Please contact me and let me be right." So Kangxi pointed to the dribs and drabs of nectar spilled on the dragon case and said, "Cold wine, one point two point three." It is not difficult to listen to this couplet, but it is difficult to work correctly after careful consideration. As a result, Sun Ge lived patiently, thinking hard all day to try to figure out whether it was right or not, but there was no exact bottom line. Sigh and frown every day. After learning this, an old family member approached Sun Ge's ear and whispered, "I want to think about it. If I want to be right, I can send someone home to ask your son-in-law ...". On hearing this, Ge Lao had a sudden opening, immediately sent a capable family member, and suddenly returned to Yan Shen to tell Taitai about it. On hearing this, Madam Tai immediately went to Zhao's house to call Zhao Zhixin. After such a story, Zhao Zhixin said with a calm expression, "Don't worry, what's the difficulty?" With that, he immediately wrote the bottom line, sealed it and gave it to the bearer. The family rushed to Beijing overnight to meet the old man, and Sun Ge opened it and was happy to shut his mouth. On this day, the emperor gave a banquet to Sun Ge-lao. When he met him, he asked, "Ai Qing, is the couplet right?" Sun Ge-lao replied, "I have thought of a couplet, and I would like to present it to you for a long time." Emperor Kangxi took a look at it, and the bottom line was: lilacs, with thousands of heads. "Emperor Kangxi even claimed to be wonderful, full of praise, and he was very happy and rewarded the old man.
As an adult, Zhao Zhixin was an outstanding poet with backbone and talent in the Qing Dynasty, as well as a famous poetic critic and calligrapher. He was born in a family of bureaucrats, and his great-grandfather Zhao Zhenye was a scholar of the Apocalypse and Ugliness in the Ming Dynasty, and he was the official to supervise the imperial history. After entering the Qing Dynasty, he served as the chief secretary of Shanxi and Jiangnan provinces. Uncle Zhao Jinmei was a scholar of Chongzhen Gengchen in the Ming Dynasty. After entering the Qing Dynasty, he served as a provincial judge in Fujian. The Zhao family was famous in the local area at that time. Since childhood, Zhao Zhixin was loved and appreciated by Sun Tingquan, a college student and official minister of the Inner Korean Secretariat. It is said that Sun Tingquan once tested Zhao Zhixin's talent with the title of "The Ode to Begonia", and saw that he was quick-witted and brilliant, and praised him face to face for his "great talent". Zhao Zhixin also became Sun Yanquan's granddaughter-in-law. Zhao Zhixin's life was also deeply influenced by Old Master Q, who was "a writer in politics, a scholar in classics". At the same time, Zhao Zhixin is also the nephew of Wang Shizhen, a famous poet and minister of punishments, that is, Wang Yuyang. Zhao Zhixin had a rough life. His life has roughly experienced three stages: official life in youth, roaming life in prime of life and seclusion life in old age. With his extraordinary talent, Zhao Zhixin won the second place in the exam at the age of 17. At the age of 18, he was admitted to the Imperial Academy for review. At the age of 23, he served as the examiner of Shanxi sub-test. At the age of 25, he was promoted to right Chunfang to praise goodness, and concurrently served as a review of the Hanlin Academy. However, just when he was in the spring breeze, there was a sensational "national shirt banquet and drama case". Zhao Zhixin was invited by his friend Hong Sheng to visit the "Palace of Eternal Life" during the "national shirt" when Queen Kang Xitong died, and was denounced by Huang Liuhong. He was dismissed and removed from his post for the crime of "disrespectful national shirt for Zhang Le". At that time, he was only 28 years old. Many of Zhao Zhixin's friends all expressed regret for his talent and experience. Sun Eshan once wrote in a poem: "The talent of Autumn Valley is almost out of the ordinary, and the juvenile department is full of romance. It's a pity that a song "The Palace of Eternal Life" ruined his fame and fortune. In the following half century, he never stepped into the upper class again. Zhao Zhixin has a lofty personality and a detached spirit of not complaining about life and the world, which can be illustrated by his attitude towards the event of the Palace of Eternal Life. After the incident, many parties tried their best to excuse themselves, and a few people even betrayed their friends at the expense of their conscience, while Zhao Zhixin said, "I'll take the exam and let it go.". Take full responsibility for this incident. He refused to pay bribes to officials of the Ministry of Justice, and as a result, he was dismissed from his post and his membership was cut. After that, he didn't change his name again like Shenxing, but stayed idle for life. When he lived in Suzhou in his later years, his friend Feng Gong told him that he had the opportunity to be reinstated as an official. He wrote a poem to express his refusal: "If Xiao Shao can get a phoenix, why not bring a crane to the table?" Zhao Zhixin entered the Jinshi at the age of 18, and was forced to leave Beijing at the age of 28. It was only 1 years before and after, but the harsh reality made him mature earlier. He saw through the filth of the officialdom and the coldness of the world, especially the intrigue, rivalry and the snobbishness of some snobs within the ruling clique, and he was extremely disgusted with flattery. He wants to lead an honest and clean life, keep his personality, and don't go along with those people. In addition, he thinks that he is talented and capable, and he is not modest enough to treat others and act cautiously, which will inevitably make him the object of exclusion. Therefore, there was once a sense of loneliness and sadness in his works. He conveyed such an emotion in his poems such as Weeding and Cicada. For example, in the twenty-first year of Kangxi, in the poem "Cicada", he said: "I know why I am degenerating, and I will spread my voice to Qiu Shu. The deficiency is decorated with mink, and the dew is left for dinner. Crickets make peace with each other, and mantis sends peace for the time being. The severe frost is too hard, and I am afraid to come to the cold early. " What needs to be pointed out in particular is that although Zhao Zhixin was in an official position, he still felt the sufferings of the people, and his consciousness of worrying about the country and the people was displayed in his writing. At the age of 23, he wrote a poem "Monument by the Road" on the way to Shanxi after having obtained the provincial entrance examination, which profoundly exposed the hypocrisy and deception of many merit monuments on both sides of the road and reproduced the double oppression of the working people. The official life in youth ended with the event of the Palace of Eternal Life, which was also a major turning point in Zhao Zhixin's life. If Zhao Zhixin had some misgivings about realizing himself before, he was completely relieved at this moment, and poured a cavity of resentment and injustice into his pen. From the time he was demoted to the age of 63 (the second year of Yongzheng, in 1724 AD), it was Zhao Zhixin's roaming period all over the country. He used this to dispel his worries and seek ideological comfort in the landscape. Through roaming, going deep into society, getting close to people, observing people's feelings and public opinions, I visited many intimate friends. He gradually realized the darkness of society from the darkness of officialdom, and gradually realized the suffering of the broad masses of people from personal misfortune. After roaming in this period, Zhao Zhixin's thought and literary creation level have been greatly improved, and his civilian consciousness has become more and more in his thoughts. The more he contacts with ordinary people, the more he resents those in power. It is in constant contact with ordinary people that his thoughts and feelings have been truly deepened and sublimated, and the contradiction between himself and those in power has gradually socialized. He wrote many excellent poems about what he saw and heard during his roaming. In Zhao Zhixin's creation, no matter the poems about objects, nostalgic poems, or those "poems about people's grievances" of new Yuefu style, they all strive to have an impact on society and readers, in order to arouse readers' feelings of approval, sympathy or anger and hatred. Realism is the consistent style of his poems. He sympathized with the people and wrote many excellent realistic poems in his life, which were included in his Records of Poems on Mount Li. This collection of poems contains 144 poems by Zhao Zhixin in 19 volumes. Some of Zhao Zhixin's poems reflect the people's miserable life in the early Qing Dynasty and the causes of their sufferings. For example, Dike Tan is about floods, Ji Drought is about droughts, Cut Twenty Rhymes is about frost disasters, and Remember locusts is about insect disasters and so on. But Zhao Zhixin not only resented natural disasters, but also blamed man-made disasters. In The Locust, he persuaded locusts not to eat farmers' crops, and had better settle down in the residence of dignitaries, which showed his dislike for the ruling clique. In the 44th year of Kangxi's A Journey to the Blue Waves, he criticized the supreme ruler-the emperor: "The hentai, a thousand miles away from Lianjiang, was blown into Changyang Palace for no reason. Cuihua is wandering in the spring, so why not come in the clear autumn? " Accuse the emperor not to just travel to the south of the Yangtze River, but to look at the disaster situation in the north of the Yangtze River and observe the people's feelings. In the "Book of Searching for Mountains", he lashed the dissolute and shameless officials in the ruling clique by using the monsters in the picture. Zhao Zhixin attached importance to society and readers, showing a strong sense of participation and social responsibility of a feudal intellectual. Therefore, his poems fully reflect the reality, which is in sharp opposition to the formalism and sectarianism advocated by Wang Yuyang in the poetry circle, and a famous "poetry case-solving" appeared in the poetry circle of Shanzuo in the early Qing Dynasty. Wang Yuyang was the leader of poetry circles in the early Qing Dynasty and an advocate of "verve theory". Under his influence, formalism and sectarianism were formed in the poetry circle. Zhao Zhixin, who was deeply influenced by Yan Yu and Wu Qiao's thoughts, advocated that "there should be someone in the poem" and opposed the writer's moaning and being divorced from reality; Advocating "there must be something outside poetry" and emphasizing the realism and educational significance of poetry; It advocates that "the text is based on meaning and the language is the service", and requires that the form should obey the content and the language should serve the content; It advocates that writers should "follow what they do" and freely choose their artistic style, and opposes measuring the quality of their works with the only yardstick of "verve". His monograph on poetry, Tan Long Lu, is aimed at the theory of verve. Zhao Zhixin also called on writers to inherit the realistic traditions of The Book of Songs, Han Yuefu and Du Fu and Bai Juyi, and not to be confused by the formalistic poetics at that time. Although his proposition is radical, his basic point of view is correct. His above ideas hit the nail on the head of the formalistic poetic style, and there are some merits.
Zhao Zhixin ended his roaming life at the age of 63 and returned to his hometown. Although he lives in seclusion, his thoughts of caring about reality and society have not changed, and his pen reflecting reality has not been put away. At the age of 7, although he was blind due to illness, he still kept writing and wrote more than 1 poems. His works are simple in language and novel in conception, and many of them are still widely circulated. Throughout Zhao Zhixin's life, as an official, he is indeed unfortunate. However, as a poet and an excellent realistic poet, it is precisely because of this "misfortune" that he has made such a strange man who "embraces wizards and loses wizards".